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Topic: The Normal Christian Life, by Watchman Nee
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CHAPTER 6
THE PATH OF PROGRESS: PRESENTING OURSELVES TO GOD
Our study has now brought us to the point where we are able to consider the true nature of consecration. We have before us the second half of Romans 6 from verse 12 to the end. In Romans 6.12,13 we read: " Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey the lusts thereof : neither present your members unto sin as instruments of unrighteousness ; but present yourselves unto God, as alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God." The operative word here is "present" and this occurs five times, in verses 13, 16 and 19.*
Many have taken this word "present" to Imply consecration without looking carefully into its content. Of course that is what it does mean, but not in the sense in which we so often understand it. It is not the consecration of our 'old man' with his instincts and resourcesour natural wisdom, strength and other gifts-to the Lord for Him to use.
* Note-Two Greek verbs paristano and paristemi are translated in these verses by 'present' in the R.V. where the A.V. has 'yield'. Paristemi occurs frequently with this meaning, e.g. in Rom. 12.1; 2 Cor. 11. 2 ; Col. 1. 22, 28, and in Luke 2. 22 where it is used of the presenting of the infant Jesus to God in the Temple. Both words have an active sense for which the R.V. translation 'present' is greatly to be preferred. 'Yield ' contains a passive idea of 'surrender' that has coloured much evangelical thought but which is not in keeping with the context here in Romans-ED.
This will be at once clear from verse 13. Note there the clause " as alive from the dead ". Paul says: " Present yourselves unto God, as alive from the dead ". This defines for us the point at which consecration begins. For what is here referred to is not the consecration of anything belonging to the old creation, but only of that which has passed through death to resurrection. The 'presenting' spoken of is the outcome of my knowing my old man to be crucified. Knowing, reckoning, presenting to God: that is the Divine order.
When I really know I am crucified with Him, then spontaneously I reckon myself dead (verses 6 and 11) ; and when I know that I am raised with Him from the dead, then likewise I reckon myself " alive unto God in Christ Jesus " (verses 9 and 11), for both the death and the resurrection side of the Cross are to be accepted by faith. When this point is reached, giving myself to Him follows. In resurrection He is the source of my life -indeed He is my life; so I cannot but present everything to Him, for all is His, not mine. But without passing through death I have nothing to consecrate, nor is there anything God can accept, for He has condemned all that is of the old creation to the Cross. Death has cut off all that cannot be consecrated to Him, and resurrection alone has made consecration possible. Presenting myself to God means that henceforth I consider my whole life as now belonging to the Lord.
THE THIRD STEP: " PRESENT YOURSELVES . . ."
Let us observe that this 'presenting' relates to the members of my body-that body which, as we saw earlier, is now unemployed in respect of sin. " Present yourselves ... and your members ", says Paul, and again: " Present your members " (Romans 6. 13, Is). God requires of me that I now regard all my members, all my faculties, as belonging wholly to Him.
It is a great thing when I discover I am no longer my own but His. If the ten shillings in my pocket belong to me, then I have full authority over them. But if they belong to another who has committed them to me in trust, then I cannot buy what I please with them, and I dare not lose them. Real Christian life begins with knowing this. How many of us know that, because Christ is risen, we are therefore alive " unto God " and not unto ourselves? How many of us dare not use our time or money or talents as we would, because we realise they are the Lord's, not ours? How many of us have such a strong sense that we belong to Another that we dare not squander a shilling of our money, or an hour of our time, or any of our mental or physical powers?
On one occasion a Chinese brother was travelling by train and found himself in a carriage together with three nonChristians who wished to play cards in order to while away the time. Lacking a fourth to complete the game, they invited this brother to join them. 'I am sorry to disappoint you', he said, 'but I cannot join your game for I have not brought my hands with me.'' Whatever do you mean?' they asked in blank astonishment. 'This pair of hands does not belong to me', he said, and then there followed the explanation of the transfer of ownership that had taken place in his life. That brother regarded the members of his body as belonging entirely to the Lord. That is true holiness.
Paul says, " Present your members as servants to righteousness unto sanctification (A.V, 'holiness')" (Romans 6. 19). Make it a definite act. " Present yourselves unto God."
SEPARATED UNTO THE LORD
What is holiness? Many people think we become holy by the eradication of something evil within. No, we become holy by being separated unto God. In Old Testament times, it was when a man was chosen by God to be altogether His that he was publicly anointed with oil and was then said to be 'sanctified'. Thereafter he was regarded as set apart to God. In the same manner even animals or material things-a lamb, or the gold of the temple-could be sanctified, not by the eradication of anything evil in them, but by being thus reserved exclusively to the Lord. 'Holiness' in the Hebrew sense meant something thus set apart, and all true holiness is holiness " to the Lord " (Exodus 28. 36). I give myself over wholly to Christ: that is holiness.
Presenting myself to God implies a recognition that I am altogether His. This giving of myself is a definite thing, just as definite as reckoning. There must be a day in my life when I pass out of my own hands into His, and from that day forward I belong to Him and no longer to myself. That does not mean that I consecrate myself to be a preacher or a missionary. Alas, many people are missionaries not because they have truly consecrated themselves to God but because, in the sense of which we are speaking, they have not consecrated themselves to Him. They have 'consecrated' (as they would put it) something altogether different, namely, their own uncrucified natural faculties to the doing of His work; but that is not true consecration. Then to what are we to be consecrated? Not to Christian work, but to the will of God to be and do whatever He wants.
David had many mighty men. Some were generals and others were gatekeepers, according as the king assigned them their tasks. We must be willing to be either generals or gatekeepers, allotted to our parts just as God wills and not as we choose. If you are a Christian, then God has marked out a pathway for you-a 'course' as Paul calls it in 2 Timothy 4. 7. Not only Paul's path but the path of every Christian has been clearly marked out by God, and it is of supreme importance that each one should know and walk in the God-appointed course. 'Lord, I give myself to Thee with this desire alone, to know and walk in the path Thou hast ordained.' That is true giving. If at the close of a life we can say with Paul: " I have finished my course ", then we are blessed indeed. There is nothing more tragic than to come to the end of life and know we have been on the wrong course. We have only one life to live down here and we are free to do as we please with it, but if we seek our own pleasure our life will never glorify God. A devoted Christian once said in my hearing, 'I want nothing for myself ; I want everything for God.' Do you want anything apart from God, or does all your desire centre in His will? Can you truly say that the will of God is " good and acceptable and perfect " to you? (Romans 12. 2).
For it is our wills that are in question here. That strong selfassertive will of mine must go to the Cross, and I must give myself over wholly to the Lord. We cannot expect a tailor to make us a coat if we do not give him any cloth, nor a builder to build us a house if we let him have no building material; and in just the same way we cannot expect the Lord to live out His life in us if we do not give Him our lives in which to live. Without reservations, without controversy, we must give ourselves to Him to do as He pleases with us. " Present yourselves unto God " (Romans 6. 13).
SERVANT OR SLAVE?
If we give ourselves unreservedly to God, many adjustments may have to be made: in family, or business, or church relationships, or in the matter of our personal views. God will not let anything of ourselves remain. His finger will touch, point by point, everything that is not of Him, and He will say: 'This must go'. Are you willing? It is foolish to resist God, and always wise to submit to Him. We admit that many of us still have controversies with the Lord. He wants something, while we want something else. Many things we dare not look into, dare not pray about, dare not even think about, lest we lose our peace. We can evade the issue in that way, but to do so will bring us out of the will of God. It is always an easy matter to get out of His will, but it is a blessed thing just to hand ourselves over to Him and let Him have His way with us.
How good it is to have the consciousness that we belong to the Lord and are not our own I There is nothing more precious in the world. It is that which brings the awareness of His continual presence, and the reason is obvious. I must first have the sense of God's possession of me before I can have the sense of His presence with me. When once His ownership is established, then I dare do nothing in my own interests, for I am His exclusive property. " Know ye not, that to whom ye present yourselves as servants unto obedience, his servants ye are whom ye obey?" (Romans 6.16). The word here rendered 'servant' really signifies a bondservant, a slave. This word is used several times in the second half of Romans 6. What is the difference between a servant and a slave? A servant may serve another, but the ownership does not pass to that other. If he likes his master he can serve him, but if he does not like him he can give in his notice and seek another master. Not so is it with the slave. He is not only the servant of another but he is the possession of another. How did I become the slave of the Lord? On His part He bought me, and on my part I presented myself to Him. By right of redemption I am God's property, but if I would be His slave I must willingly give myself to Him, for He will never compel me to do so.
The trouble about many Christians to-day is that they have an insufficient idea of what God is asking of them. How glibly they say: 'Lord, I am willing for anything.' Do you know that God is asking of you your very life? There are cherished ideals, strong wills, precious relationships, much-loved work, that will have to go; so do not give yourself to God unless you mean it. God will take you seriously, even if you did not mean it seriously.
When the Galilean boy brought his bread to the Lord, what did the Lord do with it? He broke it. God will always break what is offered to Him. He breaks what He takes, but after breaking it He blesses and uses it to meet the needs of others. After you give yourself to the Lord, He begins to break what was offered to Him. Everything seems to go wrong, and you protest and find fault with the ways of God. But to stay there is to be no more than just a broken vessel-no good for the world because you have gone too far for the world to use you, and no good for God either because you have not gone far enough for Him to use you. You are out of gear with the world, and you have a controversy with God. This is the tragedy of many a Christian.
My giving of myself to the Lord must be an initial fundamental act. Then day by day I must go on giving to Him, not finding fault with His use of me but accepting with praise even what the flesh revolts against. I am the Lord's, and now no longer reckon myself to be my own but acknowledge in everything His ownership and authority. That is the attitude God requires, and to maintain it is true consecration. I do not consecrate myself to be a missionary or a preacher ; I consecrate myself to God to do His will where I am, be it in school, office or kitchen, counting whatever He ordains for me to be the very best, for nothing but good can come to those who are wholly His.
May we always be possessed by the consciousness that we are not our own!
(END OF CHAPTER 6)
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CHAPTER 5
THE DIVIDE OF THE CROSS
The kingdom of this world is not the kingdom of God. God had in His heart a world-system- a universe of His creatingwhich should be headed up in Christ His Son (Col. 1. 16, 17). But Satan, working through man's flesh, has set up instead a rival system known in Scripture as "this world "-a system in which we are involved and which he himself dominates. He has in fact become " the prince of this world " (John 12. 3 1).
TWO CREATIONS
Thus, in Satan's hands, the first creation has become the old creation, and God's primary concern is now no longer with that but with a second and new creation. He is bringing in a new creation, a new kingdom and a new world, and nothing of the old creation, the old kingdom or the old world can be transferred to the new. It is a question now of these two rival realms, and of which realm we belong to.
The apostle Paul, of course, leaves us in no doubt as to which of these two realms is now in fact ours. He tells us that God, in redemption, "delivered us out of the power of darkness, and translated us into the kingdom of the Son of his love " (Col. 1. 12, 13). But in order to bring us into His new kingdom, God must do something new in us. He must make of us new creatures. Unless we are created anew we can never fit into the new realm. " That which is born of the flesh is flesh "; and, " flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; neither doth corruption inherit incorruption " (John 3. 6 ; I Cor. 15. 5 0). However educated, however cultured, however improved it be, flesh is still flesh. Our fitness for the new kingdom is determined by the creation to which we belong. Do we belong to the old creation or the new? Are we born of the flesh or of the Spirit? Our ultimate suitability for the new realm hinges on the question of origin. The question is not 'good or bad?' but 'flesh or Spirit? ' " That which is born of the flesh is flesh ", and it will never be anything else. That which is of the old creation can never pass over into the new.
Once we really understand what God is seeking, namely, something altogether new for Himself, then we shall see clearly that we can never bring any contribution from the old realm into that new thing. God wanted to have us for Himself, but He could not bring us as we were into that which He had purposed; so He first did away with us by the Cross of Christ, and then by resurrection provided a new life for us. " If any man is in Christ, he is a new creature (mg. ' there is a new creation'): the old things are passed away; behold, they are become new " (2 Cor. 5.17). Being now new creatures with a new nature and a new set of faculties, we can enter the new kingdom and the new world.
The Cross was the means God used to bring to an end the old things' by setting aside altogether our 'old man', and the resurrection was the means He employed to impart to us all that was necessary for our life in that new world. " We were buried therefore with him through baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we also might walk in newness of life " (Rom. 6.4).
The greatest negative in the universe is the Cross, for with it God wiped out everything that was not of Himself : the greatest positive in the universe is the resurrection, for through it God brought into being all He will have in the new sphere. So the resurrection stands at the threshold of the new creation. It is a blessed thing to see that the Cross ends all that belongs to the first regime, and that the resurrection introduces all that pertains to the second. Everything that had its beginning before resurrection must be wiped out. Resurrection is God's new starting-point.
We have now two worlds before us, the old and the new. In the old, Satan has absolute dominion. You may be a good man in the old creation, but as long as you belong to the old you are under sentence of death, because nothing of the old can go over to the new. The Cross is God's declaration that all that is of the old creation must die. Nothing of the first Adam can pass beyond the Cross ; it all ends there. The sooner we see that, the better, for it is by the Cross that God has made a way of escape for us from that old creation. God gathered up in the Person of His Son all that was of Adam and crucified Him; so in Him all that was of Adam was done away. Then God made, as it were, a proclamation throughout the universe saying: 'Through the Cross I have set aside all that is not of Me; you who belong to the old creation are all included in that; you too have been crucified with Christ!' None of us can escape that verdict.
This brings us to the subject of baptism. "Are ye ignorant that all we who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him through baptism into death" (Rom. 6. 3, 4). What is the significance of these words? Baptism in Scripture is associated with salvation. " He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved " (Mark 16. 16). We cannot speak scripturally of 'baptismal regeneration ' but we may speak of ' baptismal salvation '. What is salvation? It relates not to our sins nor to the power of sin, but to the cosmos or world-system. We are involved in Satan's world-system. To be saved is to make our exit from his world-system into God's.
In the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, says Paul, " the world hath been crucified unto me, and I unto the world" (Gal. 6.14). This is the figure developed by Peter when he writes of the eight souls who were " saved through water " (I Peter 3. 20). Entering into the ark, Noah and those with him stepped by faith out of that old corrupt world into a new one. It was not so much that they were personally not drowned, but that they were out of that corrupt system. That is salvation.
Then Peter goes on: " Which also after a true likeness (mg. 'in the antitype') doth now save you, even baptism" (verse 2 1). In other words, by that aspect of the Cross which is figured in baptism you are delivered from this present evil world, and, by your baptism in water, you confirm this. It is baptism " into his death ", ending one creation ; but it is also baptism " into Christ Jesus ", having in view a new one (Rom. 6. 3). You go down into the water and your world, in figure, goes down with you. You come up in Christ, but your world is drowned.
" Believe on the Lord Jesus, and thou shalt be saved said Paul at Philippi, and " spake the word of the Lord to the jailer and his household. And he " was baptized, he and all his, immediately" (Acts 16. 31 - 34). In doing so, he and those with him testified before God, His people and the spiritual powers that they were indeed saved from a world under judgment. As a result, we read, they rejoiced greatly, " having believed in God ".
Thus it is clear that baptism is no mere question of a cup of water, not even of a baptistry of water. It is a tremendous thing, relating as it does both to the death and to the resurrection of our Lord; and having in view two worlds. Anyone who has worked in a pagan country knows what tremendous issues are raised by baptism.
BURIAL MEANS AN END
Peter goes on now to describe baptism in the passage just quoted as " the answer of a good conscience toward God " (1 Peter 3. 21 A.V.), Now we cannot answer without being spoken to. If God had said nothing we should have no need to answer. But He has spoken ; He has spoken to us by the Cross. By it He has told of His judgment of us, of the world, of the old creation and of the old kingdom. The Cross is not only Christ's personally Cross of His Son. It affirms that I am cut off from the old world and belong now to the new. So baptism is no small thing. It means for me a definite conscious break with the old way of life. This is the meaning of Romans 6. 2: "We who died to sin, how shall we any longer live therein?" Paul says, in effect, ' If you would continue in the old world, why be baptized? You should never have been baptized if you meant to live on in the old realm'. When once we see this, we clear the ground for the new creation by our assent to the burial of the old.
In Romans 6. 5, still writing to those who "were baptized " (verse 3), Paul speaks of our being " united with him by the likeness of his death ". For by baptism we acknowledge in a figure that God has wrought an intimate union between ourselves and Christ in this matter of death and resurrection. One day I was seeking to emphasize this truth to a Christian brother. We happened to be drinking tea together, so I took a lump of sugar and stirred it into my tea. A couple of minutes later I asked, 'Can you tell me where the sugar is now, and where the tea?' ' No', he said, 'you have put them together and the one has become lost in the other; they cannot now be separated.' It was a simple illustration, but it helped him to see the intimacy and the finality of our union with Christ in death. It is God that has put us there, and God's acts cannot be reversed.
What, in fact does this union imply? The real meaning behind baptism is that in the Cross we were 'baptized ' into the historic death of Christ, so that His death became ours. Our death and His became then so closely identified that it is impossible to divide between them. It is to this historic 'baptism'-this God-wrought union with Him-that we assent when we go down into the water. Our public testimony in baptism to-day is our admission that the death of Christ two thousand years ago was a mighty allinclusive death, mighty enough and all-inclusive enough to carry away in it and bring to an end everything in us that is not of God.
RESURRECTION UNTO NEWNESS OF LIFE
If we have become united with him by the likeness of his death, we shall be also by the likeness of his resurrection" (Rom. 6. 5).
Now with resurrection the figure is different because something new is introduced. I am " baptized into his death ", but I do not enter in quite the same way into His resurrection, for, Praise the Lord! His resurrection enters into me, imparting to me a new life. In the death of the Lord the emphasis is solely upon 'I in Christ'. With the resurrection, while the same thing is true, there is now a new emphasis upon 'Christ in me'. How is it possible for Christ to communicate His resurrection life to me? How do I receive this new life? Paul suggests, I think, a very good illustration with these very same words: " united with him ". For the word 'united' (A.V. 'planted together') may carry in the Greek the sense of 'grafted' * and it gives us a very beautiful picture of the life of Christ which is imparted to us through resurrection.
*Note. Greek sumphutos 'planted or grown along with', 'united with'. The word is used in the sense of 'grafted' in Classical Greek. In the delightful illustration which follows, the analogy of grafting should Perhaps not be pressed too closely, for it is not quite safe to imply, without some qualification, that Christ is grafted into the old stock. But what parable can adequately describe the miracle of the new creation? ED.
In Fukien I once visited a man who owned an orchard of long-Zen trees. ** He had three or four acres of land and about three hundred fruit trees. I inquired if his trees had been grafted or if they were of the original native stock. 'Do you think', he replied, 'that I would waste my land growing ungrafted trees? What value could I ever expect from the old stock?'
**Note. long-ien (Euphoria longana) is a tree native to China. Its fruit resembles an apricot in size and has a round central stone, a dry, light brown, papery skin and a delicious white, grape-like pulp. It is eaten either fresh or dried, and is prized by the Chinese both for its flavour and for its food value.-ED.
So I asked him to explain the process of grafting, which he gladly did. 'When a tree has grown to a certain height', he said, 'I lop off the top and graft on to it.' Pointing to a special tree he asked, 'Do you see that tree? I call it the father tree, because all the grafts for the other trees are taken from that one. If the other trees were just left to follow the course of nature, their fruit would be only about the size of a raspberry, and would consist mainly of thick skin and seeds. This tree, from which the grafts for all the others are taken, bears a luscious fruit the size of a plum, with very thin skin and a tiny seed; and of course all the grafted trees bear fruit like it.' ' How does it happen?' I asked. 'I simply take a little of the nature of the one tree and transfer it to the other', he explained. 'I make a cleavage in the poor tree and insert a slip from the good one. Then I bind it up and leave it to grow.' ' But how can it grow?' I asked. 'I don't know', he said, 'but it does grow.'
Then he showed me a tree bearing miserably poor fruit from the old stock below the graft, and rich juicy fruit from the new stock above the graft. 'I have left the old shoots with their useless fruit on them to show the difference', he said. 'From it you can understand the value of grafting. You can appreciate, can you not, why I grow only grafted trees?'
How can one tree bear the fruit of another? How can a poor tree bear good fruit? Only by grafting. Only by our implanting into it the life of a good tree. But if a man can graft a branch of one tree into another, cannot God take of the -life of His Son and, so to speak, graft it into us?
A Chinese woman burned her arm badly and was taken to hospital. In order to prevent serious contracture due to scarring it was found necessary to graft some new skin over the injured area, but the doctor attempted in vain to graft a piece of the woman's own skin onto the arm. Owing to her age and ill-nourishment the skingraft was too poor and would not' take'. Then a foreign nurse offered a piece of skin and the operation was carried out successfully. The new skin knit with the old, and the woman left the hospital with her arm perfectly healed; but there remained a patch of white foreign skin on her yellow arm to tell the tale of the past. You ask how the skin of another grew on that woman's arm? I do not know how it grew, but I know that it did grow.
If an earthly surgeon can take a piece of skin from one human body and graft it on another,*** cannot the Divine Surgeon implant the life of His Son into me? I do not know how it is done. " The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the voice thereof, but knowest not whence it cometh, and whither it goeth ; so is every one that is born of the Spirit " (John 3. 8). We cannot tell how God has done His work in us, but it is done. We can do nothing and need do nothing to bring it about, for by the resurrection God has already done it.
God has done everything. There is only one fruitful life in the world and that has been grafted into millions of other lives. We call this the 'new birth'. New birth is the reception of a life which I did not possess before. It is not that my natural life has been changed at all ; it is that another life, a life altogether new, altogether Divine, has become my life.
God has cut off the old creation by the Cross of His Son in order to bring in a new creation in Christ by resurrection. He has shut the door to that old kingdom of darkness and translated me into the kingdom of His dear Son. My glorying is in the fact that it has been done-that, through the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, that old world has " been crucified unto me, and I unto the world " (Galatians 6.14). My baptism is my public testimony to that fact. By it, as by my oral witness, my confession is made unto salvation " (Romans 10. 10).
(END OF CHAPTER 5)
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CHAPTER 4
THE PATH OF PROGRESS: RECKONING
We now come to a matter on which there has been some confusion of thought among the Lord's children. It concerns what follows this knowledge. Note again first of all the wording of Romans 6. 6: ---Knowing this, that our old man was crucified with him ". The tense of the verb is most precious for it puts the event right back there in the past. It is final, once-for-all. The thing has been done and cannot be undone. Our old man has been crucified once and for ever, and he can never be un-crucified. This is what we need to know.
Then, when we know this, what follows? Look again at our passage. The next command is in verse 11 : "Even so reckon ye also yourselves to be dead unto sin ". This, clearly, is the natural sequel to verse 6. Read them together: 'Knowing that our old man was crucified.... reckon ye yourselves to be dead'. That is the order. When we know that our old man has been crucified with Christ, then the next step is to reckon it so.
Unfortunately; in presenting the truth of our union with Christ the emphasis has too often been placed upon this second matter of reckoning ourselves to be dead, as though that were the starting point, whereas it should rather be upon knowing ourselves to be dead. God's Word makes it clear that 'knowing' is to precede 'reckoning'. " Knowing this ... reckon." The sequence is most important. Our reckoning must be based on knowledge of divinely revealed fact, for otherwise faith has no foundation on which to rest. When we know, then we reckon spontaneously.
So in teaching this matter we should not overemphasize reckoning. People are always trying to reckon without knowing. They have not first had a Spirit-given revelation of the fact; yet they try to reckon and soon they get into all sorts of difficulties. When temptation comes they begin to reckon furiously: 'I am dead; I am dead; I am dead!' but in the very act of reckoning they lose their temper. Then they say, 'It doesn't work. Romans 6. 11 is no good.' And we have to admit that verse 11 is no good without verse 6. So it comes to this, that unless we know for a fact that we are dead with Christ, the more we reckon the more intense will the struggle become, and the issue will be sure defeat.
For years after my conversion I had been taught to reckon. I reckoned from 1920 until 1927. The more I reckoned that I was dead to sin, the more alive I clearly was. I simply could not believe myself dead and I could not produce the death. Whenever I sought help from others I was told to read Romans 6. 11, and the more I read Romans 6. 11 and tried to reckon, the further away death was: I could not get at it. I fully appreciated the teaching that I must reckon, but I could not make out why nothing resulted from it. I have to confess that for months I was troubled. I said to the Lord, 'If this is not clear, if I cannot be brought to see this which is so very fundamental, I will cease to do anything. I will not preach any more ; I will not go out to serve Thee anymore; I want first of all to get thoroughly clear here.' For months I was seeking, and at times I fasted, but nothing came through.
I remember one morning-that morning was a real morning and one I can never forget-I was upstairs sitting at my desk reading the Word and praying, and I said, 'Lord, open my eyes!' And then in a flash I saw it. I saw my oneness with Christ. I saw that I was in Him, and that when He died I died. I saw that the question of my death was a matter of the past and not of the future, and that I was just as truly dead as He was because I was in Him when He died. The whole thing had dawned upon me. I was carried away with such joy at this great discovery that I jumped from my chair and cried, 'Praise the Lord, I am dead!' I ran downstairs and met one of the brothers helping in the kitchen and laid hold of him. ' Brother ', I said, ' do you know that I have died?' I must admit he looked puzzled. 'What do you mean?' he said, so I went on: 'Do you not know that Christ has died? Do you not know that I died with Him? Do you not know that my death is no less truly a fact than His?' Oh it was so real to me! I longed to go through the streets of Shanghai shouting the news of my discovery. From that day to this I have never for one moment doubted the finality of that word: " I have been crucified with Christ ".
I do not mean to say that we need not work that out. Yes, there is an outworking of the death which we are going to see presently, but this, first of all, is the basis of it. I have been crucified: it has been done. What, then, is the secret of reckoning? To put it in what is untrue true. But if, on the other hand, it is a fact that I have fifteen shillings in my pocket, then with great ease and assurance I can enter fifteen shillings in my account-book. God tells us to reckon ourselves dead, not that by the process of reckoning we may become dead, but because we are dead. He never told us to reckon what was not a fact.
Having said, then, that revelation leads spontaneously to reckoning, we must not lose sight of the fact that we are presented with a command: " Reckon ye . . ." There is a definite attitude to be taken. God asks us to do the account ; to put down ' I have died ' and then to abide by it. Why? Because it is a fact. When the Lord Jesus was on the cross, I was there in Him. Therefore I reckon it to be true. I reckon and declare that I have died in Him. Paul said, " Reckon ye also yourselves to be dead unto sin, but alive unto God." How is this possible? "In Christ Jesus." Never forget that it is always and only true in Christ. If you look at yourself you will think death is not there, but it is a question of faith not in yourself but in Him. You look to the Lord, and know what He has done. 'Lord, I believe in Thee, I reckon upon the fact in Thee.' Stand there all the day.
THE RECKONING OF FAITH
The first four-and-a-half chapters of Romans speak of faith and faith and faith. We are justified by faith in Him (Rom. 3. 28; 5. 1). Righteousness, the forgiveness of our sins, and peace with God are all ours by faith, and without faith in the finished work of Jesus Christ none can possess them. But in the second section of Romans we do not find the same repeated mention of faith, and it might at first appear that the emphasis is therefore different. It is not really so, however, for where the words ' faith ' and ' believe ' drop out the word ' reckon ' takes their place. Reckoning and faith are here practically the same thing.
What is faith? Faith is my acceptance of God's fact. It always has its foundations in the past. What relates to the future is hope rather than faith, although faith often has its object or goal in the future, as in Hebrews 11. Perhaps for this reason the word chosen here is 'reckon'. It is a word that relates only to the past-to what we look back to as settled, and not forward to as Yet to be. This is the kind of faith described in Mark 11. 24: " All things whatsoever ye pray and ask for, believe that ye have received them, and ye shall have them." The statement there is that, if you believe that you already have received your requests (that is, of course, in Christ), then 'you shall have them'. To believe that you may get something, or that you can get it, or even that you will get it, is not faith in the sense meant here. This is faith -to believe that you have already got it. Only that which relates to the past is faith in this sense. Those who say 'God can' or 'God may' or 'God must' or 'God will' do not necessarily believe at all. Faith always says, 'God has done it'.
When, therefore, do I have faith in regard to my crucifixion? Not when I say God can, or will, or must crucify me, but when with joy I say, 'Praise God, in Christ I am crucified!' In Romans 3 we see the Lord Jesus bearing our sins and dying as our Substitute that we might be forgiven. In Romans 6 we see ourselves included in the death whereby He secured our deliverance. When the first fact was revealed to us we believed on Him for our justification. God tells us to reckon upon the second fact for our deliverance. So that, for practical purposes, 'reckoning' in the second section of Romans takes the place of 'faith' in the first section. The emphasis is not different. The normal Christian life is lived progressively, as it is entered initially, by faith in Divine fact: in Christ and His Cross.
TEMPTATION AND FAILURE, THE CHALLENGE TO FAITH
For us, then, the two greatest facts in history are these: that all our sins are dealt with by the Blood, and that we ourselves are dealt with by the Cross. But what now of the matter of temptation? What is to be our attitude when, after we have seen and believed these facts, we discover the old desires rising up again? Worse still, what if we fall once more into known sin? What if we lose our temper, or worse? Is the whole position set forth above proved thereby to be false?
Now remember, one of the Devil's main objects is always to make us doubt the Divine facts. (Compare Gen. 3. 4) After we have seen, by revelation of the Spirit of God, that we are indeed dead with Christ, and have reckoned it so, he will come and say: 'There is something moving inside. What about it? Can you call this death?' When that happens, what will be our answer? The crucial test is just here. Are you going to believe the tangible facts of the natural realm which are clearly before your eyes, or the intangible facts of the spiritual realm which are neither seen nor scientifically proved?
Now we must be careful. It is important for us to recall again what are facts stated in God's Word for faith to lay hold of and what are not. How does God state that deliverance is effected? Well, in the first place, we are not told that sin as a principle in us is rooted out or removed. To reckon on that will be to miscalculate altogether and find ourselves in the false position of the man we considered earlier, who tried to put down the twelve shillings in his pocket as fifteen shillings in his accountbook. No, sin is not eradicated. It is very much there, and, given the opportunity, will overpower us and cause us to commit sins again, whether consciously or unconsciously. That is why we shall always need to know the operation of the precious Blood.
But whereas we know that, in dealing with sins committed, God's method is direct, to blot them out of remembrance by means of the Blood, when we come to the principle of sin and the matter of deliverance from its power, we find instead that God deals with this indirectly. He does not remove the sin but the sinner. Our old man was crucified with Him, and because of this the body, which before had been a vehicle of sin, is unemployed (Rom. 6. 6).* Sin, the old master, is still about, but the slave who served him has been put to death and so is out of reach and his members are unemployed. The gambler's hand is unemployed, the swearer's tongue is unemployed, and these members are now available to be used instead " as instruments of righteousness unto God " (Rom. 6. 13).
Thus we can say that' deliverance from sin' is a more scriptural idea than 'victory over sin'. The expressions --freed from sin---and " dead unto sin " in Romans 6. 7 and 11 imply deliverance from a power that is still very present and very real-not from something that no longer exists. Sin is still there, but we are knowing deliverance from its power in increasing measure day by day.
This deliverance is so real that John can boldly write: Whosoever is begotten of God doeth no sin . . . he cannot sin " (1 John 3. 9), which is, however, a statement that, wrongly understood, may easily mislead us. By it John is not telling us that sin is now no longer in our history and that we shall not again commit sin. He is saying that to sin is not in the nature of that which is born of God. The life of Christ has been planted in us by new birth and its nature is not to commit sin. But there is a great difference between the nature and the history of a thing, and there is a great difference between the nature of the life within us and our history. To illustrate this (though the illustration is an inadequate one) we might say that wood ' cannot ' sink, for it is not its nature to do so ; but of course in history it will do so if a hand holds it under water. The history is a fact, just as sins in our history are historic facts; but the nature is a fact also, and so is the new nature that we have received in Christ. What is' in Christ' cannot sin; what is in Adam can sin and will do so whenever Satan is given a chance to exert his power.
So it is a question of our choice of which facts we will count upon and live by: the tangible facts of daily experience or the mightier fact that we are now 'in Christ'. The power of His resurrection is on our side, and the whole might of God is at work in our salvation (Rom. 1. 16), but the matter still rests upon our making real in history what is true in Divine fact.
" Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the proving of things not seen " (Heb. 11. 1), and " the things which are not seen are eternal " (2 Cor. 4. 18). 1 think we all know that Hebrews 11. 1 is the only definition of faith in the New Testament, or indeed in the Scriptures. It is important that we should really understand that definition. You are familiar with the common English translation of these words, describing faith as " the substance of things hoped for " (A.V.). However, the word in the Greek has in it the sense of an action and not just of some thing, a 'substance', and I confess 1 have personally spent a number of years trying to find a correct word to translate this. But the New Translation of J. N. Darby is especially good in regard to this word: " Faith is the substantiating of things hoped for". That is much better. It implies the making of them real in experience.
* The verb katargeo translated 'destroyed' in Romans 6. 6 (A.V.) does not mean 'annihilated', but 'put out of operation', 'made ineffective'. it is from the Greek root argos, ' inactive', 'not working', 'unprofitable', which is the word translated ' idle' in Matthew 20. 3, 6 of the unemployed labourers in the market place-ED.
How do we 'substantiate' something? We are doing so every day. We cannot live in the world without doing so. Do you know the difference between substance and ' substantiating'? A substance is an object, something before me. 'Substantiating' means that I have a certain power or faculty that makes that substance to be real to me. Let us take a simple illustration. By means of our senses we can take things of the world of nature and transfer them into our consciousness so that we can appreciate them. Sight and hearing, for example, are two of my faculties which substantiate to me the world of light and sound. We have colours: red, yellow, green, blue, violet; and these colours are real things. But if I shut my eyes, then to me the colour is no longer real; it is simply nothing-to me. With my faculty of sight, however, I possess the power to 'substantiate', and by that power yellow becomes yellow to me. It is not only that the colour is there, but I have the power to 'substantiate' it. I have the power to make that colour true to me and to give it reality in my consciousness. That is the meaning of 'substantiating'.
If I am blind I cannot distinguish colour, or if I lack the faculty of hearing I cannot enjoy music. Yet music and colour are in fact real things, and their reality is unaffected by whether or not I am able to appreciate them. Now we are considering here the things which, though they are not seen, are eternal and therefore real. Of course we cannot substantiate Divine things with any of our natural senses ; but there is one faculty which can substantiate the " things hoped for ", the things of Christ, and that is faith. Faith makes the real things to become
real in my experience. Faith ' substantiates ' to me the things of Christ. Hundreds of thousands of people are reading Romans 6. 6: " Our old man was crucified with him ". To faith it is true; to doubt, or to mere mental assent apart from spiritual illumination, it is not true.
Let us remember again that we are dealing here not with promises but with facts. The promises of God are revealed to us by His Spirit that we may lay hold of them; but facts are facts, and they remain facts whether we believe them or not. If we do not believe the facts of the Cross they still remain as real as ever, but they are valueless to us. It does not need faith to make these things real in themselves, but faith can 'substantiate' them and make them real in our experience.
Whatever contradicts the truth of God's Word we are to regard as the Devil's lie, not because it may not be in itself a very real fact to our senses but because God has stated a greater fact before which the other must eventually yield. I once had an experience which (though not applicable in detail to the present matter) illustrates this principle. Some years ago I was ill. For six nights I had high fever and could find no sleep. Then at length God gave me from the Scripture a personal word of healing, and because of this I expected all symptoms of sickness to vanish at once. Instead of that, not a wink of sleep could I get, and I was not only sleepless but more restless than ever. My temperature rose higher, my pulse beat faster and my head ached more severely than before. The enemy asked,' Where is God's promise? Where is your faith? What about all your prayers?' So I was tempted to thrash the whole matter out in prayer again, but was rebuked, and this Scripture came to mind: " Thy word is truth " (John 17. 17). If God's Word is truth, I thought, then what are these symptoms? They must all be lies! So I declared to the enemy, 'This sleeplessness is a lie, this headache is a lie, this fever is a lie, this high pulse is a lie. In view of what God has said to me, all these symptoms of sickness are just your lies, and God's Word to me is truth.' In five minutes I was asleep, and I awoke the following morning perfectly well.
Now of course in a particular personal matter such as the above it might be quite possible for me to deceive myself as to what God had said, but of the fact of the Cross there can never be any such question. We must believe God, no matter how convincing Satan's arguments appear.
A skilful liar lies not only in word but in gesture and deed ; he can as easily pass a bad coin as tell an untruth. The Devil is a skilful liar, and we cannot expect him to stop at words in his lying. He will resort to lying signs and feelings and experiences in his attempts to shake us from our faith in God's Word. Let me make it clear that I do not deny the reality of the ' flesh '. Indeed we shall have a good deal more to say about this further on in our study. But I am speaking here of our being moved from a revealed position in Christ. As soon as we have accepted our death with Christ as a fact, Satan will do his best to demonstrate convincingly by the evidence of our day-to-day experience that we are not dead at all but very much alive. So we must choose. Will we believe Satan's lie or God's truth? Are we going to be governed by appearances or by what God says?
I am Mr. Nee. I know that I am Mr. Nee. It is a fact upon which I can confidently count. It is of course possible that I might lose my memory and forget that I am Mr. Nee, or I might dream that I am some other person. But whether I feel like it or not, when I am sleeping I am Mr. Nee and when I am awake I am Mr. Nee; when I remember it I am Mr. Nee and when I forget it I am still Mr. Nee.
Now of course, were I to pretend to be someone else, things would be much more difficult. If I were to try and pose as Miss K. I should have to keep saying to myself all the time, 'You are Miss K.; now be sure to remember that you are Miss K.,' and despite much reckoning the likelihood would be that when I was off my guard and someone called, 'Mr. Nee!' I should be caught out and should answer to my own name. Fact would triumph over fiction, and all my reckoning would break down at that crucial moment. But I am Mr. Nee and therefore I have no difficulty whatever in reckoning myself to be Mr. Nee. It is a fact which nothing I experience or fail to experience can alter.
So also, whether I feel it or not, I am dead with Christ. How can I be sure? Because Christ has died; and since " one died for all, therefore all died " (2 Cor. 5. 14). Whether my experience proves it or seems to disprove it, the fact remains unchanged. While I stand upon that fact Satan cannot prevail against me. Remember that his attack is always upon our assurance. If he can get us to doubt God's Word, then his object is secured and he has us in his power but if we rest unshaken in the assurance of God's stated fact, assured that He cannot do injustice to His work or His Word, then it does not matter what tactics Satan adopts, we can well afford to laugh at him. If anyone should try to persuade me that I am not Mr. Nee, I could well afford to do the same.
" We walk by faith, not by appearance " (2 Cor. 5. 7, mg.). You probably know the illustration of Fact, Faith and Experience walking along the top of a wall. Fact walked steadily on, turning neither to right nor left and never looking behind. Faith followed, and all went well so long as he kept his eyes focused upon Fact ; but as soon as he became concerned about Experience and turned to see how he was getting on, he lost his balance and tumbled off the wall, and poor old Experience fell down after him.
All temptation is primarily to look within; to take our eyes off the Lord and to take account of appearances. Faith is always meeting a mountain, a mountain of evidence that seems to contradict God's Word, a mountain of apparent contradiction in the realm of tangible fact- failures in deed, as well as in the realm of feeling and suggestion-and either faith or the mountain has to go. They cannot both stand. But the trouble is that many a time the mountain stays and faith goes. That must not be. If we resort to our senses to discover the truth, we shall find Satan's lies are often enough true to our experience ; but if we refuse to accept as binding anything that contradicts God's Word and maintain an attitude of faith in Him alone, we shall find instead that Satan's lies begin to dissolve and that our experience is coming progressively to tally with that Word.
It is our occupation with Christ that has this result, for it means that He becomes progressively real to us on concrete issues. In a given situation we see Him as real righteousness, real holiness, real resurrection life-for us. What we see in Him objectively now operates in us subjectively-but really-to manifest Him in us in that situation. That is the mark of maturity. That is what Paul means by his words to the Galatians: " I am again in travail until Christ be formed in you " (4. 19). Faith is t substantiating' God's facts ; and faith is always the 'substantiating' of eternal fact- of something eternally true.
ABIDING IN HIM
Now although we have already spent long on this matter, there is a further thing that may help to make it clearer to us. The Scriptures declare that we are " dead indeed ", but nowhere do they say that we are dead in ourselves. We shall look in vain to find death within; that is just the place where it is not to be found. We are dead not in ourselves but in Christ. We were crucified with Him because we were in Him.
We are familiar with the words of the Lord Jesus, Abide in me, and I in you " (John 15. 4). Let us consider them for a moment. First they remind us once again that we have never to struggle to get into Christ. We are not told to get there, for we are there; but we are told to stay there where we have been placed. It was God's own act that put us in Christ, and we are to abide in Him. But further, this verse lays down for us a Divine principle, which is that God has done the work in Christ and not in us as individuals. The all-inclusive death and the all-inclusive resurrection of God's Son were accomplished fully and finally apart from us in the first place. It is the history of Christ which is to become the experience of the Christian, and we have no spiritual experience apart from Him. The Scriptures tell us that we were crucified " with Him ", that we were quickened, raised, and set by God in the heavenlies " in Him ", and that we are complete " in Him " (Rom. 6. 6 ; Eph. 2. 5, 6 ; Col. 2. 10). It is not just something that is still to be effected in us (though it is that, of course). It is something that has already been effected, in association with Him.
In the Scriptures we find that no Christian experience exists as such. What God has done in His gracious purpose is to include us in Christ. In dealing with Christ God has dealt with the Christian; in dealing with the Head He has dealt with all the members. It is altogether wrong for us to think that we can experience anything of the spiritual life in ourselves merely, and apart from Him. God does not intend that we should acquire something exclusively personal in our experience, and He is not willing to effect anything like that for you and me. All the spiritual experience of the Christian is already true in Christ, It has already been experienced by Christ. What we call 'our' experience is only our entering into His history and His experience.
It would be odd if one branch of a vine tried to bear grapes with a reddish skin, and another branch tried to bear grapes with a green skin, and yet another branch grapes with a very
dark purple skin, each branch trying to produce something of its own without reference to the vine. It is impossible, unthinkable. The character of the branches is determined by the vine. Yet certain Christians are seeking experiences as experiences. They think of crucifixion as something, of resurrection as something, of ascension as something, and they never stop to think that the whole is related to a Person. No, only as the Lord opens our eyes to see the Person do we have any true experience. Every true spiritual experience means that we have discovered a certain fact in Christ and have entered into that; anything that is not from Him in this way is an experience that is going to evaporate very soon. 'I have discovered that in Christ; then, Praise the Lord, it is mine! I possess it, Lord, because it is in Thee.' Oh it is a great thing to know the facts of Christ as the foundation for our experience!
So God's basic principle in leading us on experimentally is not to give us something. It is not to bring us through something, and as a result to put something into us which we can call' our experience'. It is not that God effects something within us so that we can say, 'I died with Christ last March' or 'I was raised from the dead on January 1st, 1937,' or even, 'Last Wednesday I asked for a definite experience and I have got it '. No, that is not the way. I do not seek experiences in themselves as in this present year of grace. Time must not be allowed to dominate my thinking here.
Then, some will say, what about the crises so many of us have passed through? True, some of us have passed through real crises in our lives. For instance George Muller could say, bowing himself down to the ground, 'There was a day when George Muller died'. How about that? Well, I am not questioning the reality of the spiritual experiences we go through nor the importance of crises to which God brings us in our walk with Him; indeed, I have already stressed the need for us to be quite as definite ourselves about such crises in our own lives. But the point is that God does not give individuals individual experiences. All that they have is only an entering into what God has already done. It is the 'realising' in time of eternal things. The history of Christ becomes our experience and our spiritual history; we do not have a separate history from His. The entire work regarding us is not done in us here but in Christ. He does no separate work in individuals apart from what He has done there. Even eternal life is not given to us as individuals: the life is in the Son, and " he that hath the Son hath the life ". God has done all in His Son, and He has included us in Him; we are incorporated into Christ.
Now the point of all this is that there is a very real practical value in the stand of faith that says, 'God has put me in Christ, and therefore all that is true of Him is true of me. I will abide in Him.' Satan is always trying to get us out, to keep us out, to convince us that we are out, and by temptations, failures, suffering, trial, to make us feel acutely that we are outside of Christ. Our first thought is that, if we were in Christ, we should not be in this state, and therefore, judging by the feelings we now have, we must be out of Him; and so we begin to pray, 'Lord, put me into Christ'. No! God's injunction is to " abide " in Christ, and that is the way of deliverance. But how is it so? Because it opens the way for God to take a hand in our lives and to work the thing out in us.
It makes room for the operation of His superior power-the power of resurrection (Rom. 6. 4, 9, 1 0)-so that the facts of Christ do progressively become the facts of our daily experience, and where before "sin reigned" (Rom. 5. 2 1) we make now the joyful discovery that we are truly " no longer ... in bondage to sin " (Rom. 6. 6).
As we stand steadfastly on the ground of what Christ is, we find that all that is true of Him is becoming experimentally true in us. If instead we come onto the ground of what we are in ourselves we will find that all that is true of the old nature remains true of us. If we get there in faith we have everything; if we return back here we find nothing. So often we go to the wrong place to find the death of self. It is in Christ. We have only to look within to find we are very much alive to sin; but when we look over there to the Lord, God sees to it that death works here but that newness of life " is ours also. We are " alive unto God (Rom. 6. 4, 11).
" Abide in me, and I in you." This is a double sentence: a command coupled with a promise. That is to say, there is an objective and a subjective side to God's working, and the subjective side depends upon the objective ; the " I in you " is the outcome of our abiding in Him. We need to guard against being over-anxious about the subjective side of things, and so becoming turned in upon ourselves. We need to dwell upon the objective-" abide in me "-and to let God take care of the subjective. And this He has undertaken to do.
I have illustrated this from the electric light. You are in a room and it is growing dark. You would like to have the light on in order to read. There is a reading-lamp on the table beside you. What do you do? Do you watch it intently to see if the light will come on? Do you take a cloth and polish the bulb? No, you get up and cross over to the other side of the room where the switch is on the wall and you turn the current on. You turn your attention to the source of power and when you have taken the necessary action there the light comes on here.
So in our walk with the Lord our attention must be fixed on Christ. " Abide in me, and I in you " is the Divine order. Faith in the objective facts make those facts true subjectively. As the apostle Paul puts it, " We all ... beholding ... the glory of the Lord, are transformed into the same image" (2 Cor. 3. 18 mg.). The same principle holds good in the matter of fruitfulness of life: " He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same beareth much fruit " (John 15. 5). We do not try to produce fruit or concentrate upon the fruit produced. Our business is to look away to Him. As we do so He undertakes to fulfil His Word in us.
How do we abide? 'Of God are ye in Christ Jesus.' It was the work of God to put you there and He has done it. Now stay there! Do not be moved back onto your own ground. Never look at yourself as though you were not in Christ. Look at Christ and see yourself in Him. Abide in Him, Rest in the fact that God has Put you in His Son, and live in the expectation that He will complete His work in you. It is for Him to make good the glorious promise that " sin shall not have dominion over you (Rom. 6. 14).
(END OF CHAPTER 4)
love, Eden
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CHAPTER 3
THE PATH OF PROGRESS: KNOWING
Our old history ends with the Cross ; our new history begins with the resurrection. " If any man is in Christ, he is a new creature: the old things are passed away; behold they are become new " (2 Cor. 5. 17). The Cross terminates the first creation, and out of death there is brought a new creation in Christ, the second Man. If we are 'in Adam' all that is in Adam necessarily devolves upon us; it becomes ours involuntarily, for we have to do nothing to get it. There is no need to make up our minds to lose our temper or to commit some other sin ; it comes to us freely and despite ourselves. In a similar way, if we are 'in Christ' all that is in Christ comes to us by free grace, without effort on our part but on the ground of simple faith.
But to say that all we need comes to us in Christ by free grace, though true enough, may seem unpractical. How does it work out in practice? How does it become real in our experience? As we study chapters 6, 7 and 8 of Romans we shall discover that the conditions of living the normal Christian life are fourfold. They are: (a) Knowing, (b) Reckoning, (c) Presenting ourselves to God, and (d) Walking in the Spirit, and they are set forth in that order. If we would live that life we shall have to take all four of these steps ; not one nor two nor three, but all four. As we study each of them we shall trust the Lord by His Holy Spirit to illumine our understanding; and we shall seek His help now to take the first big step forward.
OUR DEATH WITH CHRIST- AN HISTORIC FACT
Romans 6. 1 - 11 is the passage before us now. In these verses it is made clear that the death of the Lord Jesus is representative and inclusive. In His death we all died. None of us can progress spiritually without seeing this. Just as we cannot have justification if we have not seen Him bearing our sins on the Cross, so we cannot have sanctification if we have not seen Him bearing us on the Cross. Not only have our sins been laid on Him but we ourselves have been put into Him.
How did you receive forgiveness? You realised that the Lord Jesus died as your Substitute and bore your sins upon Himself, and that His Blood was shed to cleanse away your defilement. When you saw your sins all taken away on the Cross what did you do? Did you say, 'Lord Jesus, please come and die for my sins'? No, you did not pray at all; you only thanked the Lord. You did not beseech Him to come and die for you, for you realised that He had already done it.
But what is true of your forgiveness is also true of your deliverance. The work is done. There is no need to pray but only to praise. God has put us all in Christ, so that when Christ was crucified we were crucified also. Thus there is no need to pray: 'I am a very wicked person; Lord, please crucify me'. That is all wrong. You did not pray about your sins; why pray now about yourself? Your sins were dealt with by His Blood, and you were dealt with by His Cross. It is an accomplished fact. All that is left for you to do is to praise the Lord that when Christ died you died also ; you died in Him. Praise Him for it and live in the light of it. " Then believed they his words: they sang his praise " (Psalm 106.12).
Do you believe in the death of Christ? Of course you do. Well, the same Scripture that says He died for us says also that we died with Him. Look at it again: "Christ died for us" (Romans 5.8). That is the first statement, and that is clear enough ; but is this any less clear? " Our old man was crucified with him " (Romans 6. 6). "We died with Christ " (Romans 6. 8).
When are we crucified with Him? What is the date of our old man's crucifixion? Is it to- morrow? Yesterday? To-day? In order to answer this it may help us if for a moment I turn Paul's statement round and say, 'Christ was crucified with (i.e. at the same time as) our old man'. Some of you came here in twos. You travelled to this place together. You might say, 'My friend came here with me', but you might just as truly say, 'I came here with my friend'. Had one of you come three days ago and the other only to-day you could not possibly say that; but having come together you can make either statement with equal truth, because both are statements of fact. So also in historic fact we can say, reverently but with equal accuracy, ' I was crucified when Christ was crucified' or 'Christ was crucified when I was crucified', for they are not two historical events, but one. My crucifixion was " with him ". *
Has Christ been crucified? Then can I be otherwise? And if He was crucified nearly two thousand years ago, and I with Him, can my crucifixion be said to take place tomorrow? Can His be past and mine present or future? Praise the Lord, when He died on the Cross I died with Him. He not only died in my stead, but He bore me with Him to the Cross, so that when He died I died. And if I believe in the death of the Lord Jesus, then I can believe in my own death just as surely as I believe in His.
Why do you believe that the Lord Jesus died? What is your ground for that belief ? Is it that you feel He has died? No, you have never felt it. You believe it because the Word of God tells you so. When the Lord was crucified, two thieves were crucified at the same time. You do not doubt that they were crucified with Him, either, because the Scripture says so quite plainly.
You believe in the death of the Lord Jesus and you believe in the death of the thieves with Him. Now what about your own death? Your crucifixion is more intimate than theirs. They were crucified at the same time as the Lord but on different crosses, whereas you were crucified on the selfsame cross as He, for you were in Him when He died. How can you know? You can know for the one sufficient reason that God has said but an opening of the eyes of the heart to see what we have in Christ. How do you know your sins are forgiven? Is it because your pastor told you so? No, you just know it. If I ask you how you know, you simply answer, 'I know it!' Such knowledge comes by Divine revelation. It comes from the Lord Himself. Of course the fact of forgiveness of sins is in the Bible, but for the written Word of God to become a living Word from God to you He had to give you " a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him " (Eph. 1. 17). What you needed was to know Christ in that way, and it is always so.
So there comes a time, in regard to any new apprehension of Christ, when you know it in your own heart, you 'see' it in your spirit. A light has shined into your inner being and you are wholly persuaded of the fact. What is true of the forgiveness of your sins is no less true of your deliverance from sin. When once the light of God dawns upon your heart you see yourself in Christ. It is not now because someone has told you, and not merely because Romans 6 says so. It is something more even than that. You know it because God has revealed it to you by His Spirit. You may not feel it; you may not understand it; but you know it, for you have seen it. Once you have seen yourself in Christ, nothing can shake your assurance of that blessed fact.
If you ask a number of believers who have entered upon the normal Christian life how they came by their experience, some will say in this way and some will say in that. Each stresses his own particular way of entering in and produces Scripture to support his experience; and unhappily many Christians are using their special experiences and their special scriptures to fight other Christians.
The fact of the matter is that, while Christians may enter into the deeper life by different ways, we need not regard the experiences or doctrines they stress as mutually exclusive, but rather complementary. One thing is certain, that any true experience of value in the sight of God must have been, reached by way of a new discovery of the meaning of the Person and work of the Lord Jesus. That is a crucial test and a safe one.
And here in our passage Paul makes everything depend upon such a discovery. " Knowing this, that our old man was crucified with him, that the body of sin might be done away, that so we should no longer be in bondage to sin" (Romans 6. 6).
DIVINE REVELATION ESSENTIAL TO KNOWLEDGE
So our first step is to seek from God a knowledge that comes by revelation-a revelation, that is to say, not of ourselves but of the finished work of the Lord Jesus Christ on the Cross. When Hudson Taylor, the founder of the China Inland Mission, entered into the normal Christian life it was thus that he did so. You remember how he tells of his long- standing problem of how to live 'in Christ', how to draw the sap out of the Vine into himself. For he knew that he must have the life of Christ flowing out through him and yet felt that he had not got it, and he saw clearly enough that his need was to be found in Christ. 'I knew', he said, writing to his sister from Chinkiang in 1869, 'that if only I could thermos flask. Do please make me one! "
What will you say?' ' I do not think even a thermos flask would be so silly,' our friend replied. 'It would be nonsense to pray like that; it is a thermos flask!' Then my brother said, 'You are doing the same thing. God in times past has already included you in Christ. When He died, you died; when He lived, you lived. Now to-day you cannot say, " I want to die; I want to be crucified; I want to have resurrection life." The Lord simply looks at you and says, " You are dead! You have new life! " All your praying is just as absurd as that of the thermos flask. You do not need to pray to the Lord for anything; you merely need your eyes opened to see that He has done it all.'
That is the point. We need not work to die, we need not wait to die, we are dead. We only need to recognize what the Lord has already done and to praise Him for it. Light dawned for that man. With tears in his eyes he said, 'Lord, I praise Thee that Thou hast already included me in Christ. All that is His is mine!' Revelation had come and faith had something to lay hold of ; and if you could have met that brother later on, what a change you would have found!
THE CROSS GOES TO THE ROOT OF OUR PROBLEM
Let me remind you again of the fundamental nature of that which the Lord has done on the Cross. I feel I cannot press this point too much for we must see it. Suppose, for the sake of illustration, that the government of your country should wish to deal drastically with the question of strong drink and should decide that the whole country was to go 'dry', how could the decision be carried into effect? How could we help? If we were to search every shop and house throughout the land and smash all the bottles of wine or beer or brandy we came across, would that meet the case? Surely not. We might thereby rid the land of every drop of alcoholic liquor it contains, but behind those bottles of strong drink are the factories that produce them, and if we only deal with the bottles and leave the factories untouched, production will still continue and there is no permanent solution of the problem. The drink-producing factories, the breweries and distilleries throughout the land, must be closed down if the drink question is to be permanently settled.
We are the factory ; our actions are the products. The Blood of the Lord Jesus dealt with the question of the products, namely, our sins. So the question of what we have done is settled, but would God have stopped there? What about the question of what we are? Our sins were produced by us. They have been dealt with, but how are we going to be dealt with? Do you believe the Lord would cleanse away all our sins and then leave us to get rid of the sin-producing factory? Do you believe He would put away the goods produced but leave us to deal with the source of production?
To ask this question is but to answer it. Of course He has not done half the work and left the other half undone. No, He has done away with the goods and also made a clean sweep of the factory that produces the goods. The finished work of Christ really has gone to the root of our problem and dealt with it. There are no half measures with God. " Knowing this," says Paul, " that our old man was crucified with him, that the body of sin might be done away, that so we should no longer be in bondage to sin " (Rom. 6. 6). " Knowing this "! Yes, but do you know it? " Or are ye ignorant?" (Rom. 6. 3). May the Lord graciously open our eyes!
(END OF CHAPTER 3)
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CHAPTER 2
THE CROSS OF CHRIST
We have seen that Romans 1 to 8 falls into two sections, in the first of which we are shown that the Blood deals with what we have done, while in the second we shall see that the Cross* deals with what we are. We need the Blood for forgiveness; we need also the Cross for deliverance. We have dealt briefly above with the first of these two and we shall move on now to the second ; but before we do so we will look for a moment at a few more features of this passage which serve to emphasize the difference in subject matter and argument between the two halves.
* Note The author uses 'the Cross' here and throughout these studies in a special sense. Most readers will be familiar with the current use of the expression 'the Cross' to signify, firstly, the entire redemptive work accomplished historically in the death, burial, resurrection and ascension of the Lord Jesus Himself (Phil. 2.8,9), and secondly, in a wider sense, the union of believers with Him therein through grace (Rom. 6.4; Eph. 2.5,6). Clearly in that use of the term the operation of 'the Blood' in relation to forgiveness of sins (as dealt with in Chapter 1 of this book) is, from God's viewpoint, included (with all that follows in these studies) as a part of the work of the Cross. In this and the following chapters, however, the author is compelled, for lack of an alternative term, to use 'the Cross' in a more particular and limited doctrinal sense in order to draw a helpful distinction, namely, that between substitution and identification, as being, from the human angle, two separate aspects of the doctrine of redemption. Thus the name of the whole is of necessity used for one of its parts. The reader should bear this in mind in what follows.-ED.
SOME FURTHER DISTINCTIONS
Two aspects of the resurrection are mentioned in the two sections, in chapters 4 and 6. In Romans 4. 25 the resurrection of the Lord Jesus is mentioned in relation to our justification: "Jesus our Lord ... was delivered up for our trespasses, and was raised for our justification." Here the matter in view is that of our standing before God. But in Romans 6. 4 the resurrection is spoken of as imparting to us new life with a view to a holy walk: " That like as Christ was raised from the dead . . . so we also might walk in newness of life." Here the matter before us is behaviour.
Again, peace is spoken of in both sections, in the fifth and eighth chapters. Romans 5 tells of peace with God which is the effect of justification by faith in His Blood: " Being therefore justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ." (5. 1 mg.) This means that, now that I have forgiveness of sins, God will no longer be a cause of dread and trouble to me. I who was an enemy to God have been " reconciled ... through the death of his Son " (5. 10). I very soon find, however, that I am going to be a great cause of trouble to myself. There is still unrest within, for within me there is something that draws me to sin. There is peace with God, but there is no peace with ,'myself. There is in fact civil war in my own heart. This condition is well depicted in Romans 7 where the flesh and the spirit are seen to be in deadly conflict within me. But from this the argument leads in chapter 8 to the inward peace of a walk in the Spirit. " The mind of the flesh is death ", because it " is enmity against God ", " but the mind of the spirit is life and peace " (Romans 8.6,7).
Looking further still we find that the first half of the section deals generally speaking with the question of justification (see, for example, Romans 3.24-26; 4. 5, 25), while the second half has as its main topic the corresponding question of sanctification (see Rom. 6.19,22). When we know the precious truth of justification by faith we still know only half of the story. We still have only solved the problem of our standing before God. As we go on, God has something more to offer us, namely, the solution of the problem of our conduct, and the development of thought in these chapters serves to emphasize this. In each case the second step follows from the first, and if we know only the first then we are still leading a sub-normal Christian life. How then can we live a normal Christian life? How do we enter in? Well, of course, initially we must have forgiveness of sins, we must have justification, we must have peace with God: these are our indispensable foundation. But with that basis truly established through our first act of faith in Christ, it is yet clear from the above that we must move on to something more.
So we see that objectively the Blood deals with our sins, The Lord Jesus has borne them on the Cross for us as our Substitute and has thereby obtained for us forgiveness, justification and reconciliation. But we must now go a step further in the plan of God to understand how He deals with the sin principle in us. The Blood can wash away my sins, but it cannot wash away my 'old man'. It needs the Cross to crucify me. The Blood deals with the sins, but the Cross must deal with the sinner.
You will scarcely find the word 'sinner' in the first four chapters of Romans. This is because there the sinner himself is not mainly in view, but rather the sins he has committed. The word 'sinner' first comes into prominence only in chapter 5, and it is important to notice how the sinner is there introduced. In that chapter a sinner is said to be a sinner because he is born a sinner ; not because he has committed sins. The distinction is important. It is true that often when a Gospel worker wants to convince a man in the street that he is a sinner, he will use the favourite verse Romans 3. 2 3, where it says that "all have sinned"; but this use of the verse is not strictly justified by the Scriptures. Those who so use it are in danger of arguing the wrong way round, for the teaching of Romans is not that we are sinners because we commit sins, but that we sin because we are sinners, We are sinners by constitution rather than by action. As Romans 5. 19 expresses it: " Through the one man's disobedience the many were made (or 'constituted') sinners ".
How were we constituted sinners? By Adam's disobedience. We do not become sinners by what we have done but because of what Adam has done and has become. I speak English, but I am not thereby constituted an Englishman. I am in fact a Chinese. So chapter 3 draws our attention to what we have done-" all have sinned "-but it is not because we have done it that we become sinners.
I once asked a class of children. 'Who is a sinner?' and their immediate reply was, 'One who sins'. Yes, one who sins is a sinner, but the fact that he sins is merely the evidence that he is already a sinner ; it is not the cause. One who sins is a sinner, but it is equally true that one who does not sin, if he is of Adam's race, is a sinner too, and in need of redemption. Do you follow me? There are bad sinners and there are good sinners, there are moral sinners and there are corrupt sinners, but they are all alike sinners. We sometimes think that if only we had not done certain things all would be well ; but the trouble lies far deeper than in what we do: it lies in what we are. A Chinese may be born in America and be unable to speak Chinese at all, but he is a Chinese for all that, because he was born a Chinese. It is birth that counts. So I am a sinner because I am born in Adam. It is a matter not of my behaviour but of my heredity, my parentage. I am not a sinner because I sin, but I sin because I come of the wrong stock. I sin because I am a sinner.
We are apt to think that what we have done is very bad, but that we ourselves are not so bad. God is taking pains to show us that we ourselves are wrong, fundamentally wrong. The root trouble is the sinner; he must be dealt with. Our sins are dealt with by the Blood, but we ourselves are dealt with by the Cross. The Blood procures our pardon for what we have done; the Cross procures our deliverance from what we are.
MAN'S STATE BY NATURE
We come therefore to Romans 5. 12 - 2 1. In this great passage, grace is brought into contrast with sin and the obedience of Christ is set against the disobedience of Adam. It is placed at the beginning of the second section of Romans (5-12 to 8.39) with which we shall now be particularly concerned, and its argument leads to a conclusion which lies at the foundation of our further meditations. What is that conclusion? It is found in verse 19 already quoted: - For as through the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, even so through the obedience of the one shall the many be made righteous." Here the Spirit of God is seeking to show us first what we are, and then how we came to be what we are.
At the beginning of our Christian life we are concerned with our doing, not with our being; we are distressed rather by what we have done than by what we are. We think that if only we could rectify certain things we should be good Christians, and we set out therefore to change our actions. But the result is not what we expected. We discover to our dismay that it is something more than just a case of trouble on the outside that there is in fact more serious trouble on the inside. We try to please the Lord, but find something within that does not want to please Him. We try to be humble, but there is something in our very being that refuses to be humble. We try to be loving, but inside we feel most unloving. We smile and try to look very gracious, but inwardly we feel decidedly ungracious. The more we try to rectify matters on the outside the more we realise how deep-seated the trouble is within. Then we come to the Lord and say, 'Lord, I see it now! Not only what I have done is wrong; I am wrong.'
The conclusion of Romans 5. 19 is beginning to dawn upon us. We are sinners. We are members of a race of people who are constitutionally other than what God intended them to be. By the Fall a fundamental change took place in the character of Adam whereby he became a sinner, one constitutionally unable to please God; and the family likeness which we all share is no merely superficial one but extends to our inward character also. We have been " constituted sinners ". How did this come about? "By the disobedience of one", says Paul. Let me try to illustrate this.
My name is Nee. It is a fairly common Chinese name. How did I come by it? I did not choose it. I did not go through the list of possible Chinese names and select this one. That my name is Nee is in fact not my doing at all, and, moreover, nothing I can do can alter it. I am a Nee because my father was a Nee, and my father was a Nee because my grandfather was a Nee. If I act like a Nee I am a Nee, and if I act unlike a Nee I am still a Nee. If I become President of the Chinese Republic I am a Nee, or if I become a beggar in the street I am still a Nee. Nothing I do or refrain from doing will make me other than a Nee.
We are sinners not because of ourselves but because of Adam. It is not because I individually have sinned that I am a sinner but because I was in Adam when he sinned. Because by birth I come of Adam, therefore I am a part of him. What is more, I can do nothing to alter this. I cannot by improving my behaviour make myself other than a part of Adam and so a sinner. In China I was once talking in this strain and remarked, 'We have all sinned in Adam'. A man said, 'I don't understand', so I sought to explain it in this way. 'All Chinese trace their descent from Huang-ti', I said. 'Over four thousand years ago he had a war with Si-iu. His enemy was very strong, but nevertheless Huang-ti overcame and slew him. After this Huang-ti founded the Chinese nation. Four thousand years ago therefore our nation was founded by Huang-ti. Now what would have happened if Huang-ti had not killed his enemy, but had been himself killed instead? Where would you be now?' ' There would be no me at all', he answered. 'Oh, no! Huang-ti can die his death and you can live your life.' 'Impossible!' he cried, 'If he had died, then I could never have lived, for I have derived my life from him.'
Do you see the oneness of human life? Our life comes from Adam. If your great- grandfather had died at the age of three, where would you be? You would have died in him! Your experience is bound up with his. Now in just the same way the experience of every one of us is bound up with that of Adam. None can say, 'I have not been in Eden', for potentially we all were there when Adam yielded to the serpent's words. So we are all involved in Adam's sin, and by being born " in Adam " we receive from him all that he became as a result of his sin-that is to say, the Adam-nature which is the nature of a sinner. We derive our existence from him, and because his life became a sinful life, a sinful nature,therefore the nature which we derive from him is also sinful. So, as we have said, the trouble is in our heredity, not in our behaviour. Unless we can change our parentage there is no deliverance for us. But it is in this very direction that we shall find the solution of our problem, for that is exactly how God has dealt with the situation.
AS IN ADAM SO IN CHRIST
In Romans 5.12 to 21 we are not only told something about Adam; we are told also something about the Lord Jesus. " As through the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, even so through the obedience of the one shall the many be made righteous." In Adam we receive everything that is of Adam; in Christ we receive everything that is of Christ.
The terms 'in Adam' and 'in Christ' are too little understood by Christians, and, at the risk of repetition, I wish again to emphasize by means of an illustration the hereditary and racial significance of the term 'in Christ'. This illustration is to be found in the letter to the Hebrews. Do you remember that in the earlier part of that letter the writer is trying to show that Melchizedek is greater than Levi? You recall that the point to be proved is that the priesthood of Christ is greater than the priesthood of Aaron who was of the tribe of Levi. Now, in order to prove that, he has first to prove that the priesthood of Melchizedek is greater than the priesthood of Levi, for the simple reason that the priesthood of Christ is " after the order of Melchizedek " (Heb. 7. 14 - 17), while that of Aaron is, of course, after the order of Levi. If the writer can demonstrate to us that Melchizedek is greater than Levi, then he has made his point. That is the issue, and he proves it in a remarkable way.
He tells us in Hebrews chapter 7 that one day Abraham, returning from the battle of the kings (Genesis 14), offered a tithe of his spoils to Melchizedek and received from him a blessing. Inasmuch as Abraham did so, Levi is therefore of less account than Melchizedek. Why? Because the fact that Abraham offered tithes to Melchizedek means that Isaac 'in Abraham' offered to Melchizedek. But if that is true, then Jacob also 'in Abraham' offered to Melchizedek, which in turn means that Levi 'in Abraham' offered to Melchizedek. It is evident that the lesser offers to the greater (Hebrews 7. 7). So Levi is less in standing than Melchizedek, and therefore the priesthood of Aaron is inferior to that of the Lord Jesus.
Levi at the time of the battle of the kings was not yet even thought of. Yet he was " in the loins of his father " Abraham, and, " so to say, through Abraham ", he offered (Hebrews 7.9, 10). Now this is the exact meaning of 'in Christ'. Abraham, as the head of the family of faith, includes the whole family in himself. When he offered to Melchizedek, the whole family offered in him to Melchizedek. They did not offer separately as individuals, but they were in him, and therefore in making his offering he included with himself all his seed. So we are presented with a new possibility. In Adam all was lost. Through the disobedience of one man we were all constituted sinners. By him sin entered and death through sin, and throughout the race sin has reigned unto death from that day on. But now a ray of light is cast upon the scene. Through the obedience of Another we may be constituted righteous.
Where sin abounded grace did much more abound, and as sin reigned unto death, even so may grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord (Romans 5. 19-21). Oar despair is in Adam; our hope is in Christ.
THE DIVINE WAY OF DELIVERANCE
God clearly intends that this consideration should lead to our practical deliverance from sin. Paul makes this quite plain when he opens chapter 6 of his letter with the question: "Shall we continue in sin?" His whole being recoils at the very suggestion. " God forbid! ", he exclaims. How could a holy God be satisfied to have unholy, sinfettered children? And so " how shall we any longer live therein?" (Romans 6. 1, 2). God has surely therefore made adequate provision that we should be set free from sin's dominion.
But here is our problem. We were born sinners; how then can we cut off our sinful heredity? Seeing that we were born in Adam, how can we get out of Adam.? Let me say at once, the Blood cannot take us out of Adam. There is only one way. Since we came in by birth we must go out by death. To do away with our sinfulness we must do away with our life. Bondage to sin came by birth ; deliverance from sin comes by death and it is just this way of escape that God has provided. Death is the secret of emancipation. " We . . . died to sin " (Romans 6. 2).
But how can we die? Some of us have tried very hard to get rid of this sinful life, but we have found it most tenacious. What is the way out? It is not by trying to kill ourselves, but by recognizing that God has dealt with us in Christ. This is summed up in the apostle's next statement: " All we who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death " (Romans 6. 3).
But if God has dealt with us 'in Christ Jesus' then we have got to be in Him for this to become effective, and that now seems just as big a problem. How are we to ' get into ' Christ? Here again God comes to our help. We have in fact no way of getting in, but, what is more important, we need not try to get in, for we are in. What we could not do for ourselves God has done for us. He has put us into Christ. Let me remind you of 1 Corinthians 1. 30. I think that is one of the best verses of the whole New Testament: 'Ye are in Christ'. How? " Of him (that is, 'of God') are ye in Christ." Praise God! it is not left to us either to devise a way of entry or to work it out. We need not plan how to get in. God has planned it; and He has not only planned it but He has also performed it. ' Of him are ye in Christ Jesus'. We are in ; therefore we need not try to get in. It is a Divine act, and it is accomplished.
Now if this is true, certain things follow. In the illustration from Hebrews 7 which we considered above we saw that 'in Abraham' all Israel-and therefore Levi who was not yet born-offered tithes to Melchizedek. They did not offer separately and individually, but they were in Abraham when he offered, and his offering included all his seed. This, then, is a true figure of ourselves as 'in Christ'. When the Lord Jesus was on the Cross all of us died-not individually, for we had not yet been born-but, being in Him, we died in Him. " One died for all, therefore all died " (2 Cor. 5. 14). When He was crucified all of us were crucified.
Many a time when preaching in the villages of China one has to use very simple illustrations for deep Divine truth. I remember once I took up a small book and put a piece of paper into it, and I said to those very simple ones, , Now look carefully. I take a piece of paper. It has an identity of its own, quite separate from this book. Having no special purpose for it at the moment I put it into the book. Now I do something with the book. I post it to Shanghai. I do not Post the paper, but the paper has been put into the book. Then where is the paper? Can the book go to Shanghai and the paper remain here? Can the paper have a separate destiny from the book? No! Where the book goes the paper goes. If I drop the book in the river the paper goes too, and if I quickly take it out again I recover the paper also. Whatever experience the book goes through the paper goes through with it, for it is in the book.'
"Of him are ye in Christ Jesus." The Lord God Himself has put us in Christ, and in His dealing with Christ God has dealt with the whole race. Our destiny is bound up with His. What He has gone through we have gone through, for to be 'in Christ' is to have been identified with Him in both His death and resurrection. He was crucified: then what about us? Must we ask God to crucify us? Never! When Christ was crucified we were crucified; and His crucifixion is past, therefore ours cannot be future. I challenge you to find one text in the New Testament telling us that our crucifixion is in the future. All the references to it are in the Greek aorist, which is the 'once-for-all' tense, the 'eternally past' tense. (See: Romans 6. 6 ; Galatians 2. 20 ; 5. 24; 6.14). And just as no man could ever commit suicide by crucifixion, for it were a physical impossibility to do so, so also, in spiritual terms, God does not require us to crucify ourselves. We were crucified when He was crucified, for God put us there in Him. That we have died in Christ is not merely a doctrinal position, it is an eternal fact.
HIS DEATH AND RESURRECTION: REPRESENTATIVE AND INCLUSIVE
The Lord Jesus, when He died on the Cross, shed His Blood, thus giving His sinless life to atone for our sin and to satisfy the righteousness and holiness of God. To do so was the prerogative of the Son of God alone. No man could have a share in that.
The Scripture has never told us that we shed our blood with Christ. In His atoning work before God He acted alone; no other could have a part. But the Lord did not die only to shed His Blood: He died that we might die. He died as our Representative. In His death He included you and me.
We often use the terms 'substitution' and 'identification' to describe these two aspects of the death of Christ. Now many a time the use of the word 'identification' is good. But identification would suggest that the thing begins from our side: that I try to identify myself with the Lord. I agree that the word is true, but it should be used later on. It is better to begin with the fact that the Lord included me in His death. It is the 'inclusive' death of the Lord which puts me in a position to identify myself, not that I identify myself in order to be included. It is God's inclusion of me in Christ that matters. It is something God has done.
For that reason those two New Testament words " in Christ " are always very dear to my heart. The death of the Lord Jesus is inclusive. The resurrection of the Lord Jesus is alike inclusive. We have looked at the first chapter of I Corinthians to establish the fact that we are " in Christ Jesus ". Now we will go to the end of the same letter to see something more of what this means. In 1 Corinthians 15. 45, 47 two remarkable names or titles are used of the Lord Jesus. He is spoken of there as " the last Adam " and He is spoken of too as " the second man ". Scripture does not refer to Him as the second Adam but as " the last Adam " nor does it refer to Him as the last Man, but as " the second man ". The distinction is to be noted, for it enshrines a truth of great value.
As the last Adam, Christ is the sum total of humanity ; as the second Man He is the Head of a new race. So we have here two unions, the one relating to His death and the other to His resurrection. In the first place His union with the race as " the last Adam " began historically at Bethlehem and ended at the cross and the tomb. In it He gathered up into Himself all that was in Adam and took it to judgment and death. in the second place our union with Him as " the second man " begins in resurrection and ends in eternity ? which is to say, it never ends-for, having in His death done away with the first man in whom God's purpose was frustrated, He rose again as Head of a new race of men, in whom that purpose shall be fully realised.
When therefore the Lord Jesus was crucified on the cross, He was crucified as the last Adam. All that was in the first Adam was gathered up and done away in Him. We were included there. As the last Adam He wiped out the old race ; as the second Man He brings in the new race. It is in His resurrection that He stands forth as the second Man, and there too we are included. " For if we have become united with him by the likeness of his death, we shall be also by the likeness of his resurrection " (Romans 6. 5). We died in Him as the last Adam; we live in Him as the second Man. The Cross is thus the power of God which translates us from Adam to Christ.
(END OF CHAPTER 2)
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Dear Eden
By the Grace of God. I red the book It was so encourging and inspiring. Please try to get a book for me I wanted to circulate with my friends. Now I understood the value of Blood.Recently our church pastor also bible study taking the lesson of romans. You know we the Indian Penthocoastal People always used to utter ( Yesuven rathim ) that means Blood of Jesus. Blood of Jesus we have the Victory. I wanted to read secand time and grow more in the scripture.
Today is sunday evening I have to go to church.
Let me cut short. Please keep in touch
Yours lovingly
mathews
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mathews
Posts: 23 | From: U A E | Registered: Sep 2009
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mathews
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I am trying to read it. But I cannot. what to do
But I try my level best. Please keep me in your prayers. Some time feel lonely and depression
let me cut short with love
mathews
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mathews
Posts: 23 | From: U A E | Registered: Sep 2009
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Eden
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Below is the actual text of the book.
http://www.worldinvisible.com/library/nee/nchrlife/normal01.htm
CHAPTER 1
THE BLOOD OF CHRIST
WHAT is the normal Christian life? We do well at the outset to ponder this question. The Object of these studies is to show that it is something very different from the life of the average Christian. Indeed a consideration of the written Word of God--of the Sermon on the Mount for example-should lead us to ask whether such a life has ever in fact been lived upon the earth, save only by the Son of God Himself. But in that last saving clause lies immediately the answer to our question.
The apostle Paul gives us his own definition of the Christian life in Galatians 2. 20. It is " no longer I, but Christ ". Here he is not stating something special or peculiar-a high level of Christianity. He is, we believe, presenting God's normal for a Christian, which can be summarized in the words: I live no longer, but Christ lives His life in me.
God makes it quite clear in His Word that He has only one answer to every human need- His Son, Jesus Christ. In all His dealings with us He works by taking us out of the way and substituting Christ in our place. The Son of God died instead of us for our forgiveness: He lives instead of us for our deliverance. So we can speak of two substitutions-a Substitute on the Cross who secures our forgiveness and a Substitute within who secures our victory. It will help us greatly, and save us from much confusion, if we keep constantly before us this fact, that God will answer all our questions in one way only, namely, by showing us more of His Son.
OUR DUAL PROBLEM: SINS AND SIN
We shall take now as a starting-point for our study of the normal Christian life that great exposition of it which we find in the first eight chapters of the Epistle to the Romans, and we shall approach our subject from a practical and experimental point of view. It will be helpful first of all to point out a natural division of this section of Romans into two, and to note certain striking differences in the subjectmatter of its two parts.
The first eight chapters of Romans form a self-contained unit. The four-and-a-half chapters from 1. 1 to 5. 11 form the first half of this unit and the three-and-a half chapters from 5. 12 to 8. 39 the second half. A careful reading will show us that the subject-matter of the two halves is not the same. For example, in the argument of the first section we find the plural word 'sins' given prominence. In the second section, however, this is changed, for while the word 'sins' hardly occurs once, the singular word 'sin' is used again and again and is the subject mainly dealt with. Why is this?
It is because in the first section it is a question of the sins I have committed before God, which are many and can be enumerated, whereas in the second it is a question of sin as a principle working in me. No matter how many sins I commit, it is always the one sin- principle that leads to them. I need forgiveness for my sins, but I need also deliverance from the power of sin. The former touches my conscience, the latter my life. I may receive forgiveness for all my sins, but because of my sin I have, even then, no abiding peace of mind.
When God's light first shines into my heart my one cry is for forgiveness, for I realise I have committed sins before Him; but when once I have received forgiveness of sins I make a new discovery, namely, the discovery of sin, and I realise not only that I have committed sins before God but that there is something wrong within. I discover that I have the nature of a sinner. There is an inward inclination to sin, a power within that draws to sin. When that power breaks out I commit sins. I may seek and receive forgiveness, but then I sin once more. So life goes on in a vicious circle of sinning and being forgiven and then sinning again. I appreciate the blessed fact of God's forgiveness, but I want something more than that: I want deliverance. I need forgiveness for what I have done, but I need also deliverance from what I am.
GOD'S DUAL REMEDY: THE BLOOD AND THE CROSS
Thus in the first eight chapters of Romans two aspects of salvation are presented to us: firstly, the forgiveness of our sins, and secondly, our deliverance from sin. But now, in keeping with this fact, we must notice a further difference.
In the first part of Romans 1 to 8, we twice have reference to the Blood of the Lord Jesus, in chapter 3. 25 and in chapter 5. 9. In the second, a new idea is introduced in chapter 6. 6, where we are said to have been 11 crucified " with Christ. The argument of the first part gathers round that aspect of the work of the Lord Jesus which is represented by 'the Blood' shed for our justification through " the remission of sins ". This terminology is however not carried on into the second section, where the argument centres now in the aspect of His work represented by 'the Cross', that is to say, by our union with Christ in His death, burial and resurrection.
This distinction is a valuable one. We shall see that the Blood deals with what we have done, whereas the Cross deals with what we are. The Blood disposes of our sins, while the Cross strikes at the root of our capacity for sin. The latter aspect will be the subject of our consideration in later chapters.
THE PROBLEM OF OUR SINS
We begin, then, with the precious Blood of the Lord Jesus Christ and its value to us in dealing with our sins and justifying us in the sight of God. This is set forth for us in the following passages: " All have sinned " (Romans 3. 23). " God commendeth his own love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, being now justified by his blood, shall we be saved from the wrath of God through him " (Rom. 5.8, 9). Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus: whom God set forth to be a propitiation, through faith, by his blood, to shew his righteousness, because of the passing over of the sins done aforetime, in the forbearance of God; for the shewing, say, of his righteousness at this present season: that he might himself be just, and the justifier of him that hath faith in Jesus " (Romans 3. 24 - 26).
We shall have reason at a later stage in our study to look closely at the real nature of the Fall and the way of recovery. At this point we will just remind ourselves that when sin came in it found expression in an act of disobedience to God (Rom. 5.19). Now we must remember that whenever this occurs the thing that immediately follows is guilt. Sin enters as disobedience, to create first of all a separation between God and man whereby man is put away from God. God can no longer have fellowship with him, for there is something now which hinders, and it is that which is known throughout Scripture as 'sin'. Thus it is first of all God who says, "They are all under sin " (Rom. 3. 9). Then, secondly, that sin in man, which henceforth constitutes a barrier to his fellowship with God, gives rise in him to a sense of guilt ---of estrangement from God. Here it is man himself who, with the help of his awakened conscience, says, " I have sinned " (Luke 15. 18). Nor is this all, for sin also provides Satan with his ground of accusation before God, while our sense of guilt gives him his ground of accusation in our hearts ; so that, thirdly, it is 'the accuser of the brethren' (Rev. 12. 10) who now says, 'You have sinned'.
To redeem us, therefore, and to bring us back to the purpose of God, the Lord Jesus had to do something about these three questions of sin and of guilt and of Satan's charge against us. Our sins had first to be dealt with, and this was effected by the precious Blood of Christ. Our guilt has to be dealt with and our guilty conscience set at rest by showing us the value of that Blood. And finally, the attack of the enemy has to be met and his accusations answered. In the Scriptures the Blood of Christ is shown to operate effectually in these three ways, Godward, manward and Satanward.
There is thus an absolute need for us to appropriate these values of the Blood if we are to go on. This is a first essential. We must have a basic knowledge of the fact of the death of the Lord Jesus as our Substitute upon the Cross, and a clear apprehension of the efficacy of His Blood for our sins, for without this we cannot be said to have started upon our road. Let us look then at these three matters more closely.
THE BLOOD IS PRIMARILY FOR GOD
The Blood is for atonement and has to do first with our standing before God. We need forgiveness for the sins we have committed, lest we come under judgment; and they are forgiven, not because God overlooks what we have done but because He sees the Blood. The Blood is therefore not primarily for us but for God. If I want to understand the value of the Blood I must accept God's valuation of it, and if I do not know something of the value set upon the Blood by God I shall never know what its value is for me. It is only as the estimate that God puts upon the Blood of Christ is made known to me by His Holy Spirit that I come into the good of it myself and find how precious indeed the Blood is to me. But the first aspect of it is Godward. Throughout the Old and New Testaments the word 'blood' is used in connection with the idea of atonement, I think over a hundred times, and throughout it is something for God.
In the Old Testament calendar there is one day that has a great bearing on the matter of our sins and that day is the Day of Atonement. Nothing explains this question of sins so clearly as the description of that day. In Leviticus 16 we find that on the Day of Atonement the blood was taken from the sin offering and brought into the Most Holy Place and there sprinkled before the Lord seven times. We must be very clear about this. On that day the sin offering was offered publicly in the court of the tabernacle. Everything was there in' full view and could be seen by all. But the Lord commanded that no man should enter the tabernacle itself except the high priest. It was he alone who took the blood and, going into the Most Holy Place, sprinkled it there to make atonement before the Lord. Why? Because the high priest was a type of the Lord Jesus in His redemptive work (Hebrews 9.11, 12), and so, in figure, he was the one who did the work. None but he could even draw near to enter in. Moreover, connected with his going in there was but one act, namely, the presenting of the blood to God as something He had accepted, something in which He could find satisfaction.
It was a transaction between the high priest and God in the Sanctuary, away from the eyes of the men who were to benefit by it. The Lord required that. The Blood is therefore in the first place for Him. Earlier even than this there is described in Exodus 12. 13 the shedding of the blood of the passover lamb in Egypt for Israel's redemption. This is again, I think, one of the best types in the Old Testament of our redemption. The blood was put on the lintel and on the door-posts, whereas the meat, the flesh of the lamb, was eaten inside the house; and God said: "When I see the blood, I will pass over you ". Here we have another illustration of the fact that the blood was not meant to be resented to man but to God, for the blood was put on the lintel and on the door-posts, where those feasting inside the house would not see it.
GOD IS SATISFIED
It is God's holiness, God's righteousness, which demands that a sinless life should be given for man. There is life in the Blood, and that Blood has to be poured out for me, for my sins. God is the One who requires it to be so. God is the One who demands that the Blood be presented, in order to satisfy His own righteousness, and it is He who says: 'When I see the blood, I will pass over you. 'The Blood of Christ wholly satisfies God.
Now I desire to say a word at this point to my younger brethren in the Lord, for it is here that we often get into difficulties. As unbelievers we may have been wholly untroubled by our conscience until the Word of God began to arouse us. Our conscience was dead, and those with dead consciences are certainly of no use to God. But later, when we believed, our awakened conscience may have become acutely sensitive, and this can constitute a real problem to us. The sense of sin and guilt can become so great, so terrible, as almost to cripple us by causing us to lose sight of the true effectiveness of the Blood. It seems to us that our sins are so real, and some particular sin may trouble us so many times, that we come to the point where to us our sins loom larger than the Blood of Christ.
Now the whole trouble with us is that we are trying to sense it ; we are trying to feel its value and to estimate subjectively what the Blood is for us. We cannot do it; it does not work that way. The Blood is first for God to see. We then have to accept God's valuation of it. In doing so we shall find our valuation. If instead we try to come to a valuation by way of our feelings we get nothing; we remain in darkness. No, it is a matter of faith in God's Word. We have to believe that the Blood is precious to God because He says it is so (1 Peter 1. 18,19). If God can accept the Blood as a payment for our sins and as the price of our redemption, then we can rest assured that the debt has been paid. If God is satisfied with the Blood, then the Blood must be acceptable. Our valuation of it is only according to His valuation-neither more nor less. It cannot, of course, be more, but it must not be less.
Let us remember that He is holy and He is righteous, and that a holy and righteous God has the right to say that the Blood is acceptable in His eyes and has fully satisfied, Him the Lord Jesus. I approach God through His merit alone, and never on the basis of my attainment; never, for example, on the ground that I have been extra kind or patient to- day, or that I have done something for the Lord this morning. I have to come by way of the Blood every time. The temptation to so many of us when we try to approach God is to think that because God has been dealing with us-because He has been taking steps to bring us into something more of Himself and has been teaching us deeper lessons of the Cross-He has thereby set before us new standards, and that only by attaining to these can we have a clear conscience before Him. No! A clear conscience is never based upon our attainment; it can only be based on the work of the Lord Jesus in the shedding of His Blood.
I may be mistaken, but I feel very strongly that some of us are thinking in terms such as these: 'Today I have been a little more careful ; to-day I have been doing a little better; this morning I have been reading the Word of God in a warmer way, so to-day I can pray better!' Or again, 'To-day I have had a little difficulty with the family ; I began the day feeling very gloomy and moody; I am not feeling too bright now; it seems that there must be something wrong; therefore I cannot approach God.'
What, after all, is your basis of approach to God? Do you come to Him on the uncertain ground of your feeling, the feeling that you may have achieved something for God today? Or is your approach based on something far more secure, namely, the fact that the Blood has been shed, and that God looks on that Blood and is satisfied? Of course, were it conceivably possible for the Blood to suffer any change, the basis of your approach to God might be less trustworthy. But the Blood has never changed and never will. Your approach to God is therefore always in boldness; and that boldness is yours through the Blood and never through your personal attainment. Whatever be your measure of attainment to-day or yesterday or the day before, as soon as you make a conscious move into the Most Holy Place, immediately you have to take your stand upon the safe and only ground of the shed Blood. Whether you have had a good day or a bad day, whether you have consciously sinned or not, your basis of approach is always the same-the Blood of Christ. That is the ground upon which you may enter, and there is no other.
As with many other stages of our Christian experience, this matter of access to God has two phases, an initial and a progressive one. The former is presented to us in Ephesians 2 and the latter in Hebrews 10. Initially, our standing with God was secured by the Blood, for we are "made nigh in the blood of Christ" (Ebb. 2. 13). But thereafter our ground of continual access is still by the Blood, for the apostle exhorts us: ---Having therefore ... boldness to enter into the holy place by the blood of Jesus ... let us draw near " (Heb. 10. 19, 22). To begin with I was made nigh by the Blood, and to continue in that new relationship I come through the Blood every time. It is not that I was saved on one basis and that I now maintain my fellowship on another. You say, 'That is very simple; it is the A.B.C. of the Gospel.' Yes, but the trouble with many of us is that we have moved away from the A.B.C. We have thought we had progressed and so could dispense with it, but we can never do so. No, my initial approach to God is by the Blood, and every time I come before Him it is the same. Right to the end it will always and only be. on the ground of the Blood.
This does not mean at all that we should live a careless life, for we shall shortly study another aspect of the death of Christ which shows us that anything but that is contemplated. But for the present let us be satisfied with the Blood, that it is there and that it is enough. We may be weak, but looking at our weakness will never make us strong. No trying to feel bad and doing penance will help us to be even a little holier. There is no help there, so let us be bold in our approach because of the Blood: 'Lord, I do not know fully what the value of the Blood is, but I know that the Blood has satisfied Thee ; so the Blood is enough for me, and it is my only plea. I see now that whether I have really progressed, whether I have really attained to something or not, is not the point. Whenever I come before Thee, it is always on the ground of the precious Blood.' Then our conscience is really clear before God. No conscience could ever be clear apart from the Blood. It is the Blood that gives us boldness. " No more conscience of sins these are tremendous words of Hebrews 10. 2. We are cleansed from every sin ; and we may truly echo the words of Paul : " Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not reckon sin " (Romans 4. 8).
OVERCOMING THE ACCUSER
In view of what we have said we can now turn to face the enemy, for there is a further aspect of the Blood which is Satanward. Satan's most strategic activity in this day is as the accuser of the brethren (Rev. 12. 10) and it is as this that our Lord confronts him with His special ministry as High Priest " through his own blood" (Hebrews 9. 12). How then does the Blood operate against Satan? It does so by putting God on the side of man against him. The Fall brought something into man which gave Satan a footing within him, with the result that God was compelled to withdraw Himself. Man is now outside the garden-beyond reach of the glory of God (Romans 3. 23) Because he is inwardly estranged from God. Because of what man has done, there is something in him which, until it is removed, renders God morally unable to defend him. But the Blood removes that barrier and restores man to God and God to man. Man is in favour now, and because God is on his side he can face Satan without fear.
You remember that verse in John's first Epistle and this is the translation of it I like best: " The blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from every sin ".* It is not exactly " all sin " in the general sense, but every sin, every item. What does it mean? Oh, it is a marvellous thing! God is in the light, and as we walk in the light with Him everything is exposed and open to that light, so that God can see it all-and yet the Blood is able to cleanse from every sin. What a cleansing! It is not that I have not a profound knowledge of myself, nor that God has not a perfect knowledge of me. It is not that I try to hide something, nor that God tries to overlook something. No, it is that He is in the light and I too am in the light, and that there the precious Blood cleanses me from every sin. The Blood is enough for that!
*1 John 1. 7: Marginal reading of New Translation by J. N. Darby
Some of us, oppressed by our own weakness, may at times have been tempted to think that there are sins which are almost unforgivable. Let us remember the word: " The blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanses us from every sin." Big sins, small sins, sins which may be very black and sins which appear to be not so black, sins which I think can be forgiven and sins which seem unforgivable, yes, all sins, conscious or unconscious, remembered or forgotten, are included in those words: "every sin ". " The blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from every sin ", and it does so because in the first place it satisfies God.
Since God, seeing all our sins in the light, can forgive them on the basis of the Blood, what ground of accusation has Satan? Satan may accuse us before Him, but, " If God is for us, who is against us? " (Romans 8. 3 1). God points him to the Blood of His dear Son. It is the sufficient answer against which Satan has no appeal. " Who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect? It is God that justifieth; who is he that shall condemn? It is Christ Jesus that died, yea rather, that was raised from the dead, who is at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us " (Romans 8. 33, 34).
So here again our need is to recognize the absolute sufficiency of the precious Blood. " Christ having come a high priest ... through his own blood, entered in once for all into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption " (Hebrews 9. 11, 12). He was Redeemer once. He has been High Priest and Advocate for nearly two thousand years. He stands there in the presence of God, and " he is the propitiation for our sins (1 John 2. 1, 2). Note the words of Hebrews 9. 14: " How much more shall the blood of Christ ". They underline the sufficiency of His ministry. It is enough for God.
What then of our attitude to Satan? This is important, for he accuses us not only before God but in our own conscience also. 'You have sinned, and you keep on sinning. You are weak, and God can have nothing more to do with you.' This is his argument. And our temptation is to look within and in self-defence to try to find in ourselves, in our feelings or our behaviour, some ground for believing that Satan is wrong. Alternatively we are tempted to admit our helplessness and, going to the other extreme, to yield to depression and despair. Thus accusation becomes one of the greatest and most effective of Satan's weapons. He points to our sins and seeks to charge us with them before God, and if we accept his accusations we go down immediately.
Now the reason why we so readily accept his accusations is that we are still hoping to have some righteousness of our own. The ground of our expectation is wrong. Satan has succeeded in making us look in the wrong direction. Thereby he wins his point, rendering us ineffective. But if we have learned to put no confidence in the flesh, we shall not wonder if we sin, for the very nature of the flesh is to sin. Do you understand what I mean? It is because we have not come to appreciate our true nature and to see how helpless we are that we still have some expectation in ourselves, with the result that, when Satan comes along and accuses us, we go down under it.
God is well able to deal with our sins; but He cannot deal with a man under accusation, because such a man is not trusting in the Blood. The Blood speaks in his favour, but he is listening instead to Satan. Christ is our Advocate but we, the accused, side with the accuser. We have not recognized that we are unworthy of anything but death; that, as we shall shortly see, we are only fit to be crucified anyway. We have not recognized that it is God alone that can answer the accuser, and that in the precious Blood He has already done so.
Our salvation lies in looking away to the Lord Jesus and in seeing that the Blood of the Lamb has met the whole situation created by our sins and has answered it. That is the sure foundation on which we stand. Never should we try to answer Satan with our good conduct but always with the Blood. Yes, we are sinful, but, praise God! the Blood cleanses us from every sin. God looks upon the Blood whereby His Son has met the charge, and Satan has no more ground of attack. Our faith in the precious Blood and our refusal to be moved from that position can alone silence his charges and put him to flight (Romans 8. 33, 34) ; and so it will be, right on to the end (Revelation 12. 11). Oh, what an emancipation it would be if we saw more of the value in God's eyes of the precious Blood of His dear Son!
(END OF CHAPTER 1)
love, Eden
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